Category Archives: Vegetarianism

Part of me finds christmas quite abhorrent because meat gluttony peaks at this time of year and there’s really no escaping it. Everywhere I look – in my newsfeed, in commercials and many of the websites I use to do … Continue reading →

In whatever I do, I can’t help but be the bridge builder; its how I’m “made”, which is to see both sides or, more accurately, the fuller picture. It’s this same over the currently topical matter of feminine v masculine, … Continue reading →

When you find “tribe” your relative uniqueness can flip from being a weakness to becoming your very power-point…that which unites you and makes you more determined to be the difference together. Deep familiarity sweeps you over for the fact that it is so typically absent when you are amongst other people…and suddenly you are all lit up, laughing at all the ironies that once floored you, ignited with enthusiasm, passion, innovation and determination whilst eagerly gobbling up all the resources you can pool together. Its a powerful thing and all the more so when its been absent from your life for so long you had all but convinced yourself you were destined to travel this road alone.Continue reading →

Sometimes its as though the stones of a place speak to us; sometimes its a feeling of a place that takes us back in time…reminding us of something important, like a memo to ourselves. Continue reading →

Discovering this incredible, natural food source ethically and sustainably harvested in the jungles of Africa by people whose practices are gentle and whose lives have been tranformed (a food which felt like it was transforming my health) prompted me to consider many layers of broader relevance. I considered how we look forward to the future and what practices we use, for instance how we marry the best of traditional and modern methods (not always bowing to the latter…), how we take the quality of life of those producing the product into account and how their personal attributes (especially where this involves handling living things) feeds into the quality and the vibration of that product. Above all, there is something to be learned about how the sweetest and most nutritious things tend to come out of practices that involve the least interference, and bully tactics, of man. This approach to “harvesting” anything feeds into its energetic imprint when it reaches our cells as we eat it; you can literally taste the difference. When we snatch and grab at what we think is ours, the food tells a very different story… Continue reading →

This was one of the most powerfully apt metaphors that had ever presented itself to me. When this everyday domestic appliance upon which we “relied” for sustenance formed a crack and “broke down”, I realised the issues here weren’t so much the fridge or the deteriorating food, the corporations I was dealing with, the real people on the end of the phone or even in my household as the strings pulling them all and the beliefs about life holding them together, including fears around such heavy-old-pieces of life-furniture as lack and survival, made themselves suddenly very obvious. Once we see how active our beliefs are in this world…far more “solid”, in a way, than the three-dimensional objects that come to represent them…then we start to see how powerful and necessary it is to place ourselves as heart-guardians of that domain, choosing which belief-systems we actually want to maintain in order to manifest the solid realities we really want to experience “at ground level” as it were. Importantly, we learn not to leave it up to other people, with other priorities and agendas, to determine what those belief-systems look like.

We are all seeing that system breaking down before our very eyes, its long-preserved contents quickly purifying – again like my fridge – but as I’ve learned this week, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe we didn’t need such a “great big monster” to serve our basic needs. Maybe its time to get closer to what we really want. Perhaps the wonderful new silence where that huge machine used to hum and churn in my house is a timely reminder of how we hardly detect some of the base rhythms that provoke our disquietude until they are suddenly switched off! (Read more…) Continue reading →

Their immense zest for life is the very thing that arrests me when I watch the lambs; the way these wooly youngsters engage with absolutely everything their idyllic green world has to offer, from the comedic pheasants walking by to the playful breeze that seem to whip them into jumping spirals of the most erratic motion, like leaves lifting off the ground. They race each other in playful gangs and they collaborate with audacious climbing partners, vying to get to the top. They suddenly leap up, bronking and bucking with bizarre spring-loadedness as though the ground has just tickled them. Then, when just as suddenly spent, they gravitate to their ever watchful mother’s side and succumb to warm grassy patches where, alone or in twin pairs, they meditate away all the gentle hours, eyes half closed and, yes, a kind of smile on their faces; apparently transported by an enviable ability to surrender themselves fully to the moment. Then again, suddenly up on those spring-loaded feet, they’re back to scrambling to that water’s edge, conquering the tree stump or forming pyramids on each other’s backs. If you have ever enjoyed the simple pleasure of watching a pack of dogs playing or even (for that matter) human children, these are really no different and their joie de vive is contagious as you watch. Continue reading →

When I first started to produce art for a living, sheep were my chosen subject so often that I became known in some circles as ‘the sheep painter’. All my life, I’ve had a special place in my heart for … Continue reading →

There’s no better benchmark of our own life-evolution than the Christmas into New Year period – perhaps because we can so easily compare it with our life-stock of remarkably similar circumstances, collected over many years and played through with almost … Continue reading →

To those of you who know, and have read my earlier posts, about my ongoing recovery from fibromyalgia, and to anyone still feeling stuck in the territory, this post is a year-end addendum of some real newsworthiness and optimism. I … Continue reading →